Booker kicks off 2 week ‘a Justice for all’ tour

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) kicked off his “Justice for All Tour” Saturday in Newark, a two-week trip that will take the presidential hopeful to Iowa, Georgia and Nevada.

Booker’s first speech in his presidential campaigns’ first nationwide tour highlighted a laundry list of liberal priorities ranging from criminal justice reform to climate change to economic inequality as the New Jersey Democrat seeks to underline his progressive bona fides.

“We’re here today to seek justice. We’re here today because we are impatient for that justice. And our sense of moral urgency, our impatience, comes from the most demanding of all values, it comes from love. Love of our families, love of our communities, love of our country and love of each other,” he said at the speech’s start.

Casting himself as a unifier, Booker portrayed himself as America’s candidate who will fight to improve lives for communities beyond his hometown of Newark, where he served as Mayor.

“I learned right here on these streets that you can’t make progress by dividing people. You can’t make progress by stoking fear or setting us one against the other. I learned that the only way to overcome the really tough challenges is by extending grace, finding common ground and working together,” Booker said.

“Farm communities and factory towns that like us here in Newark have been given up on and talked down to, counted out and underestimated. And they can’t wait for change. None of us can. We are here today to say, ‘we can’t wait.’”